Why Are Republicans Losing Out to Their “Straw Man” President?

11 MARCH 2012

If Barack Obama Really Is the “Straw Man” President that the Republicans pretend him to be, how can it be so hard for them to come up with a viable candidate to win the election in November?

It Looks like the Actual Facts of the Obama presidency so far are making a hard case for the Republican argument
that we need more hands-off government like we’ve had over the past thirty years:

01: Private-sector Jobs rising faster than Republican can cut jobs in the public sector

02: Unemployment numbers going down, despite Republican best efforts to make unemployed Americans wait until after the next election, before taking steps to turn the economy around

03: Millions More Americans Insured for Healthcare, and tens of millions more insured without exclusions or lifetime limits or preexisting conditions, while the Republican candidates avoid healthcare like a live wire 

04: The Auto Industry Turned Around, with GM is once again the world’s leading auto manufacturer

05: Increasing Domestic Petroleum production, even as America resumes the march toward cleaner air, greater fuel-economy, and alternative-energy manufacturing readying to take on China and Spain and the rest of the world

06: Homosexual Americans Serving Openly in the armed forces, without incident

If it Truly Took the Conservative Hand of Ronald Reagan to dig America out of the left-hand ditch
that the Democrats had gotten us into, it now looks up to Progressive hand of Barack Obama to get us back out of the right-hand ditch that the Republicans got us into during the 2000s.

If Things Are So Dim as the Republicans say they are, how come America’s future under the Republican “straw-man” President Barack Obama suddenly looks so bright?

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

Too-Much Teaching Is the Problem with Not-Enough Learning:

02 MARCH 2012

The Challenge with Education in America today is the focus on teaching. If we really want our American kids to learn, America needs to focus on learning.
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Given That the U.S. is such an anti-intellectual country (in which the President of the United States was called a snob, earlier this week, for wanting every kid to be able to go to college), it’s hardly surprising that our educational results are going down the tubes.

If you meet many teachers in American public schools, you will meet quite a few people with college-infused theories about how to teach young minds. What you won’t find is very many people for whom learning—the actual, lifetime practice of learning new and challenging things—is much of a priority at all.

That is, if you’re looking for intellectuals and highly inquisitive people, America’s elementary and secondary schools are not a very good place to find them.
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This Non-intellectual or Anti-intellectual American attitude dominates our schools. Looking around in any school, all that you see is the evidence of teaching—with the results of rote-learned teaching exercises mounted in a few glass-fronted cabinets in the front halls. What you won’t see is much evidence of real learning.

It’s this misguide focus that leads our educational system astray.
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With the Increase in inter-ethnic marriages, those cultures that promote and stress the importance of knowledge are starting to lose out to the generic, anti-intellectual American mix—that focuses on sports stars, rock stars, movie stars, and six-year-olds dressed up like beauty queens. While equal opportunity for all, in the great American melting pot, is essential to the American experiment, one current result of this grand experiment is an ardently pursued reversion to the mean.

“Reversion to the mean” of intellectual accomplishment is not the kind of educational achievement that will lead America to Mars and beyond. Or to energy independence with alternative, yet-to-be-invented technologies. Nor will it lead us to cures for cancer, nor cure the common cold.

“As seen on TV™”? Sure. But your better mousetraps? Not so much...
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Henry Ford was proudly belligerent about his school-based ignorance. What he knew how to do was to think. “How to think” is the primary objective of a good education.

Not “How to teach.” But “How to learn.”
____________________

Americans Who Have Home-Schooled Their Kids (whether for academic or for faith-based reasons) know how much the desire for learning is built into practically every child. Many of our most-successful, highest-achieving, home-schooled students are those raised under the concept of “un-schooling,” which nurtures the child’s innate desire to learn, learn, learn.

You never hear home-schooled families talking about “teach, teach, teach.”

Many home-schooled kids never encounter a formal “test” until they head toward college. But once these kids walk in the doors of the college admission offices and start taking the tests, their test scores shine.

If kids left to their own learning devices learn better than those who lumber through America’s schools, then it’s clearly not a question of testing.

The problem is the focus on teaching—such as “teaching to the test”—that interferes with the natural processes of learning.
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The Obvious Problem with American Schools Today—and with our anti-intellectual society in general—is that there’s not enough learning.

But these limits on learning are merely the symptom:

It’s the Focus Too-Much on Teaching
That Keeps Shutting America’s Young Minds Down.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

Despite Their Bad Regard for President Obama—

01 MARCH 2012

THE REPUBLICANS CAN’T FIND AN ACCEPTABLE—AND WINNING—PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:

Gov. Mitt Romney is thus far the closest thing that the Republican Party has to an electable candidate in relation to President Obama. But a presidential election isn’t a game of “horseshoes.”

Sen. Rick Santorum has more consistency to his conservative values, but the extreme nature of his social-policy views would make him an easy target for “mad dog” representation in Democratic ads during the upcoming campaign.

Rep. Ron Paul has many unique views that resonate greatly with people on both sides of the aisle, but his singular greatest limitation is that his direct style of advocating for his views does not work well with a form of government that requires compromise, not dictatorship or obstruction, to get anything done.

Speaker Newt Gingrich hardly merits mention. His wide variety of ideas contradicts his recent efforts to reestablish himself as an authentic Conservative.

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We Americans Always Vote for our presidents as if we are choosing a dictator. We care most about his views, which leads us to believe that he will steer our country in our preferred direction.

But this is not the case: no elected official can impose his will in this way. Either he must compromise, or he fails his constituents with a gridlock stalemate in which everybody avoids the tough choices of what they don’t want, but nobody gets what they need.

(The debt-ceiling debacle demonstrated this perfectly: the Tea Party Republicans held their ground against paying America’s bills without future reductions, the future reductions were arranged in what turns out to be an imminently surmountable fashion, and all we got for their trouble was a lowering of our credit rating—We didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt!)

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Even as We Have Watched President Barack Obama implement numerous mainstream, conservative, Republican ideas—

His liberal, progressive, Democratic base has detested his betrayal of their “Hope and Change” values—

While the loyal, Republican opposition garnered great success with their consistent, repetitive, Frank Luntz-crafted messages of “lower taxes” and “too much regulation” and “no more Keynesian/Kenyan socialism”—

Until the economy started turning around.

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But a steadily rising economy pretty much threatens to change everything....

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This Puts the Republicans in a challenging spot right now: in order to win the Presidency in November, either the economy must go back to Hell in a handbasket—

Or the Republicans must come up with a candidate who is:

(A) Conservative-enough to pass muster with the base, and

(B) Reasonable-enough to pass must with the majority of relatively moderate Americans actually willing to vote for him, and

(C) Leader-like and charismatic-enough to bring enough of the people out to vote.

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Now That it Seems to be “Halftime in America,” maybe the former mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California would be interested in taking on the job.

You read it first here. 

Now announcing the soon-to-be, up-and-coming front-runner for the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination:

The Man with No Name.

Regards,

(($; -)}

Gozo!

America: Dictatorship or Compromise?

23 DECEMBER 2011

In Forms of Government, you can have dictatorship, gridlock, or compromise. (Gridlock equals a dictatorship by the minority. Compromise is rule by the majority, with protection of the minority.)

A pledge not to raise taxes equals a dedication to the art of “Cut and Spend” government. The efforts of the Tea Party Republican’s to impose their minority ideology on the rest of us constitutes dictatorship by gridlock.

Our representative democracy can’t afford a government dictatorship by gridlock.

America Can’t Afford a Continuation of Republican

 “Cut and Spend” Government.

In 1789, the American people, having won our freedom from dictatorship through our Revolution, voted for a government of compromise.

In 2012, we, the people, will get to vote for a government of compromise once again.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

An Ode Against “The Republican Oath for Failure”

08 NOVEMBER 2011

What part of “We want America to fail!”
don’t they understand?

When the Republicans wanted “this President to fail,”
which America did they think he was president of?

When a majority of the American people elected Barack Obama to succeed,
what part of “majority rule” did congressional Republicans
think their oaths of office excluded them from?

When Republican pledges to Grover Norquist
overrule their constitutional oaths of office,
what country do our Republican legislators think they govern in?
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Forcing America’s constitutionally elected President to fail:
what form of treason is that?

What part of “We want this President to fail”—

    during a time of great economic crisis—
    following an administration that started off-the-budget wars
        and an unsustainable Medicare program—
    with tens of millions of Americans unemployed—
    and pensions ruined—
    and teachers and police and firefighters laid off—
    and two wars waging—
    and Wall Street bailed out by America’s 99%—
 
what part of this ideologically obsessive partisanship
would ever make any American vote for any Republican ever again?
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When it comes to government,
we want a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Nowhere in our constitution does it say,
“Government for the good of the Republican Party.”

Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower knew that...
____________________

We, the people of the United States of America want a government
by majority rule,
with protection of the minority
under the terms of the Constitution.

We, the people of the United States of America
want America to succeed. That’s why
we, the people,
voted for President Barack Obama
in the first place.
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As for what the leaders of the Republican Party of America believe they were doing?
By setting out to make this President fail?

That’s anybody’s guess.

On November 6, 2012,
that’s for “we, the people” to decide.

How do others look at this Republican goal of failure?
What do you think of it?
____________________

For me, the next election can’t come soon enough:
I plan to take America back.
One more step
back from the brink of “Just Say No.”

What part of “we want America to fail!”
don’t we understand?

Regards,
(($ ;-)}
Gozo!

Tea Party People: Spoiled Kindergarteners or Angry Adolescents?

18 SEPTEMBER 2011

Over the Past Year, I have spent a good deal of time on a Topix forum titled, Tea Party Rallies: ‘Impeach Obama’. At first, I found it interesting to read the vehement, anti-Obama sentiments, all of which seem to be based on a set of imaginary grievances.

My Purpose for continuing to visit this site is the same as what I do here: I work to clarify some of the ideologically beclouded thinking which seems inimical to the best prospects for our shared future, and which seem to be running America’s greatness into the ground.

My Struggle, as I See It, is to help wean America from its intellectually lazy and easy ideological blindness. We need to winnow out the fallacies that drive both sides, Left and Right. If we can get more of this “chaff” out of the way, then, left with the “wheat” grains of valid opinion that remain, we can choose among them, try different courses of action, and restore American preeminence—from a jingoist slogan (“Americans are the champions!”) to a fact-based reality—before it’s too late.

Otherwise, We Can Leave our preeminence prospects to China or India.

It’s Our Choice....

Here Is a Link to my Topix post:

Tea Party Rallies: ‘Impeach Obama’

You Might Find some of the other posts there insightful.

Best regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!

Fear of Failure or Fear of Success ?

17 SEPTEMBER 2011

Why are our people in Congress so fearful of everything that President Obama tries to do?

What makes Congress so afraid of President Obama’s “American Jobs Act”? Are they afraid it might fail?

Or Are They Afraid it Might Actually Work?

Some 46,000,000 of our fellow Americans are either unemployed or under-employed.

How about if our leaders in Congress get out of the way and give President Obama a chance to fall on his face?

.....46,000,000 Americans. And our senators and representatives fear success? Or failure?

President Obama has gone out on a limb with this jobs bill thing. What’s the best that Congress can do?

Pass this Bill.

Congress should let the chips fall where they may. But: Congress should finally take a chance and:

Pass this Bill.

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!